I give this a 7/10 for a reason: none of Sesame Street's spinoff shows are as good as the original series, and this is no exception, but that doesn't mean I don't like them at all. It lacks some but not all of its parent show's charm. The main characters here are Grover, Bert, Ernie, and Prairie Dawn, but a lot of the other characters don't appear at all outside of classic Sesame Street sketches that are shown here. Zoe and Cookie Monster occasionally appear, but they're unfortunately the only characters who appear outside of the sketches, aside from the main characters.
The segments are fun to watch. The ones were Bert plays computer games are some of the most remembered of them all. One of the games he plays all the time is called "Perfect Pair." It's a game where one has to find two socks or other items that match. There's another game he plays all the time, where one writes words with oatmeal, but I can't think of the name of it. The two aforementioned games are like no other game I've seen or played before. One of my favorite moments of the show is one segment where the main characters line up, pretend to be a train, "chug along," and say "Chugga Chugga Choo Choo!" They do this a few more times, but they replace the choo choos with similar sounds like "who who" and "coo coo" and become a "pigeon train" and an "owl train." The aforementioned scene inspired me to do the same things and made me realize what rhymes with the sound of a train's whistle, and being a "pigeon train," an "owl train," and whatnot made the scene and my imagination even better!
The characters state a few facts about themselves here that haven't been mentioned in the original series like their favorite foods (though some of them have been mentioned before), their favorite games, their favorite styles of singing, and a few others. There's even a segment where Grover shows his dance moves, and he hasn't previously done some of them on screen, as far as I know.
There are a few callbacks/references to older Sesame Street episodes here and there. Like I said, some of the old sketches are in this, though it's the same story with the more modern Sesame Street episodes (until season 40 or 41, that is). Elmo's not in a whole lot of the sketches seen here, and he doesn't appear in any of the show's original footage at all. Most of the old sketches star older characters like Grover, Herry, Bert and Ernie, and more. Some think Sesame Street went downhill when Elmo became a main character, but I don't think so. Play With Me Sesame is what got me into a few of the older Sesame Street songs like "The Honker Duckie Dinger Jamboree" and "The Bird Call Boogie." In the episode with The Bird Call Boogie, the main characters sing a brief snippet of the song and do its dance moves after the music video is done. The theme song has similar lyrics and a similar beat to Ernie's old song "Somebody Come and Play" from the original series. If you like classic Sesame Street and not modern Sesame Street, maybe you would like this better than the latter seasons, unless you don't like the idea of it being an interactive show.
